Sustainable Building Certifications

Comprehensive Life Cycle Assessments and LEED Certified Services

Whole building Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) look at all phases of the building process from cradle-to-grave, including the material selection, transportation, construction and installation, use and maintenance, and demolition and recycling. Using a combination of building modeling, LCA software, and energy modeling, and as part of our LEED certified services, Epsten Group works with our clients to design a building that will perform well through the years while also being economical.

Using LCA in tandem with Life Cycle Cost (LCC) techniques, we can help you understand and optimize your environmental impacts, energy and maintenance costs, and human health impacts over the lifetime of the building. Lower maintenance costs mean less hassle for the owner, and lower energy costs make the building more desirable for long-term tenants. As a building owner, the LCA analysis will give you confidence in stating that you have a truly sustainable building, addressing the needs of the environment, the building’s occupants and the profitability of the building.

While we often find a number of environmentally-friendly solutions have a slightly higher premium initially, these premiums can be quickly offset with reduced energy costs and national, state or local rebates or tax incentives. Epsten Group can guide you through a number of options that will save you money over the years and still keep you on track with your building’s initial budget.

As part of our LEED certified services, for buildings pursuing LEED certification, we create a report from our analysis to submit for the related LEED credit: Pilot Credit 63 – Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment for LEED v2009 projects or Materials and Resources: Building Life-Cycle Impact Reduction for LEED v4 projects. We will work with you to complete a cradle-to-grave LCA analysis that is compliant with the LEED guidelines. Qualifying buildings will see reductions in their impacts in at least three environmental categories, one of which must be global warming potential. The other environmental impact categories include depletion of the ozone layer, acidification of land and water sources, eutrophication, formation of troposhperic ozone, and depletion of non-renewable energy resources. Working for this LEED credit often aids in the achievement of other credits in the Materials and Resources, Energy and Atmosphere, and Innovation in Design categories. Our LEED Accredited Professionals will work with your team to achieve this credit and to get the most out of resulting design choices for the related credits.

With a diverse range of expertise and experience with LEED certified services, our team can guide you through every step of the process. Our registered architects and energy modelers work with our LCA expert to ensure that the LCA is conducted to optimize the design for your building. If desired, our LCA expert will also work with our LEED Accredited Professionals to ensure that the LEED credit is achieved.